I am a part of the real number that is self-aware. If this is the first thought that comes to your mind on reading the headline, you are highly likely to not be self-aware! What is self-awareness? Self-awareness is the will and the skill to understand who we are and how others see us. Why is self-awareness so important? Alan Mullaly, former Ford CEO put it best. “Self-awareness sets an upper limit to our effectiveness in all that we do” Vision, communication, teamwork, execution, design, negotiation, selling, persuasion, strategy, art, literally anything you do; how much you will succeed and how far will you go is decided by how self-aware you are. Imagine that your life-work is a car. Self-awareness is the driver. How much mileage you will get out of driving your car is decided by your self-awareness. What can I do to develop my self-awareness? There are two tools that Tasha Eurich offers in a podcast. Daily check-in At the end of the day, ask 3 questions 1) What went well today? 2) What did not go well…
The wisdom in serving self-organising systems
On 1st April, 1973, the Government of India launched ‘Project Tiger’ for the protection and conservation of the rapidly dwindling tiger population. Kailash Sankhala, the first Director, set forth on the guiding principle for Project Tiger. Do nothing (to the forest) and allow little to be done. On visiting TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) as part of a combined faculty group conducting a career guidance workshop, I remember reading a commemorative plaque there. The words that stayed with me were.. The end of social service is to end social service Dr. William Osler, the father of modern medicine, and a pioneer medical educator, was being counter-intuitive when he said.. One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine. The fields differ, but the approach underlying the words, the awareness they all show is that of intervening in a self-organising system. In order to save tigers, the action-oriented saviour may have adopted a gung-ho approach. A slew of measures and directives. Sankhala knew that intervention was the problem in the first place.…
Greta Thunberg & Climate Change
The world converging around a conversation always presents a positive opportunity. Provided we truly reflect on what we are talking about and identify what really matters. There is so much of heated opinion about Greta Thunberg, the individual. Those happy that climate change has been thrust into global consciousness look at her as an environmental crusader. Those probing her credentials to speak about climate change look at her as a spokesperson for the privileged class who damage most the climate they supposedly want to protect. To focus on Greta Thunberg as an individual is to get stuck at the symbol. Consider what is at stake – the future of our planet. A hundred years from now, all the talk about Greta, the individual, is going to be a footnote in world history. What will be probed by discerning people looking back at our time is this – Amid all the talk, what was the action taken. Did communities and nations pick up the gauntlet and ask searching questions? Did people make the effort – to know and understand..to establish and…
The Peter Drucker Diary – Entry 4
The work of a genius or giant often presents an anomaly. Reverential regard obscures the real work. People know the name, but haven’t engaged with the work. In this series, we take one Peter Drucker quote or excerpt and seek to understand it. Entry 4 “Knowledge does not eliminate skill. On the contrary, knowledge is fast becoming the foundation of skill” Knowledge and Skill get melded together in real life. Yet, when people reflect on both of them, they often make the error of looking at them in isolation. Focussing on one without considering the other often proves to be the undoing. Knowledge is ‘how things work’ The best management education provides knowledge, but if the skills of managing are not being practiced at the same time, this education is largely theoretical. Knowledge imparted without considering how it is going to be used ( skill) is like being given a manual without the real object. Management education is also received knowledge, handed down to us over the years. Real knowledge is created in…
The Peter Drucker Diary – Entry 3
The work of a genius or giant often presents an anomaly. Reverential regard obscures the real work. People know the name, but haven’t engaged with the work. In this series, we take one Peter Drucker quote or excerpt and seek to understand it. Entry 3 “Success always obsoletes the very behaviour that achieved it” Think about the courtship period of a couple. There is a notion of ‘cute’ that every man and woman remembers their partner having bestowed on them – during this lovey dovey period. This cuteness makes the heart go bonkers in crazy, stupid love and then..the wedding bells ring! And then what? The same behaviour now makes your partner come after you with a sledge hammer or Thor’s hammer! You scratch your head and wonder – what’s changed?! The great Henry Ford famously said that the customer can have a Ford car in any colour as long as it is black! Ford was the perfect practitioner of Frederick Taylor’s ‘Scientific management’. His assembly line was the embodiment of maximum efficiency so that production could be scaled up…
Organizing Ignorance
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge. – Alfred North Whitehead Indeed, Peter Drucker used to emphasize that what matters more is not how much you know, but how aware you are of what you do not know. He used to say that we should organize our ignorance. Organising helps us become aware of the structure of our knowledge and understanding and the limits thereof. For example. All of our knowledge of AI and robotics and it’s potential impact is important. What is it that we do not know and are perhaps not even aware of?! What we do not know or not strongly aware of is our own self-conception of being human and how intimately our ‘self-efficacy’ as a species is tied up with technology. We are ignorant about how profoundly AI and robotics is going to interrogate the meaning of being human. The more we explore and organize ignorance, the more we make visible the dark space within which the Knowledge Universe exists.
Aiming for team excellence? Make yourself dispensable as team-leader.
You are a fast-rising team leader intent on learning strategy & the big picture. You get feedback that you need to focus on helping team members get better at operations. How does that feel? A bit frustrating, of course. It is like halfway up the mountain, you are looking at the summit, charting your own route and then, you are asked to retrace your steps and climb down to base-camp. Is there something you can do, something different? Yes, you can. Be strategic about the whole thing itself. Yes, you are asked to work on tactical excellence by helping your team members. But no, you need not get tactical in your approach. Be strategic. Create an elaborate & systematic plan of action. How? Tactical is doing things one at a time with each member. Believing that I have to myself sit down with each and help them learn the ropes. Strategic is refusing to accept that you have to do this all by yourself. Instead you ask, how can I get them to learn largely on their own? That does not mean…
Events, Seminars, Conferences- Do you learn anything?
Business events are for networking and business generation. Well and good. They are marketed as learning opportunities. Not so well and suspect. In my limited experience, what you get to know are things that you could possibly know by reading on your own. If the speakers have inspirational quotient, go ahead and indulge yourself. Once you have indulged enough, even that becomes mundane. Why does the learning not happen? Dialogue is missing. An event can be a community in the making. But organizers do not look at it that way. To build a community requires staying connected throughout the year. A shared purpose, collaborative projects, assessments and surveys keep the fires burning. The event is then ripe for a dialogue, a conversation that goes beyond exchanging information. In a dialogue, people explore meaning, purpose, and values. They challenge and support each other by combining enquiry and advocacy. But most industry meets are seasonal events that are folded up lock,stock, and barrel until the next year comes. The events are ends in themselves. So, what do we have, right now? Instead of dialogue, we have experts addressing us. Sharing…